Several world media outlets are reporting that Taiwan is sending representatives next month to the US to purchase Aegis destroyers....Taiwan wants to buy at least six Aegis-equipped destroyers from the United States at a cost of more than $4.6 billion, a newspaper said on Monday, a plan sure to anger China which claims the island as its own.
The United Daily News quoted unnamed sources as saying Deputy Defense Minister Ko Cheng-heng and Chief of the General Staff Chen Yung-kang would travel to the United States this month to try to secure the deal.
The defense ministry declined to comment.
The navy could eventually buy an additional two destroyers after the initial six depending on the circumstances, the newspaper said.
The Aegis air defense radar and weapons system is capable of tracking and attacking dozens of missiles, aircraft and ships all at once.
The United States, the island's main arms supplier, in 2001 put off a request from Taipei to buy four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with the Aegis system, but kept the option open should China pose a sufficient threat.
Taiwan has long pursued Aegis destroyers, but the US has been reluctant to sell them to the island, believing that it doesn't have the capacity to operate them. The article goes on to discuss the current arms imbroglio.
But Washington has become increasingly frustrated by Taiwan lawmakers' long delay in passing a budget to buy key weapons platforms.
The presentation follows the usual pattern: Washington's own role in creating the issue is never mentioned, and the fact that it is the KMT that is blocking the package is never mentioned as well.
The presentation on China's claim to Taiwan is a bit schizo:
China has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. Beijing has vowed to bring the island back under mainland rule, by force if necessary.
The first sentence is a very nice formulation of the issue, progress on that front. But the second sentence is wrong; the island was never entirely under "mainland" rule -- certainly not by any Chinese emperor prior to the Manchus -- and thus the word "back" is arguable.
[Taiwan] [US] [China]
Was Taiwan ever "under mainland rule" during the Ching Dynasty? Japan sent a punitive force to Taiwan in 1874 to strike back at Aborigines who had massacred a ship-wrecked Japanese crew in the south. (Japan had first requested reparations from Beijing, but the response was "there are big parts of Taiwan that are beyond our beyond our control.")
ReplyDeleteThere were 159 uprisings in Taiwan during 212 years of Ching Dynasty rule, suggesting that the island was never "under mainland rule".